John Trudeau | Music-fest founder, 81
John Trudeau, 81, who founded the first outdoor summer music festival in the Pacific Northwest in 1963, died last Monday of complications from congestive heart failure. Officials of the Britt Music Festival said that he died in Portland, Ore.
John Trudeau, 81, who founded the first outdoor summer music festival in the Pacific Northwest in 1963, died last Monday of complications from congestive heart failure. Officials of the Britt Music Festival said that he died in Portland, Ore.
Mr. Trudeau and a friend, Sam McKinney, arrived in the southern Oregon town of Jacksonville in 1962 while searching for an outdoor music festival site.
They found good acoustics at a site homesteaded in the 1850s by Peter Britt. The next summer, Mr. Trudeau conducted the first performance of the Britt Festival Orchestra on a plywood stage with lights hung inside tin cans.
The Britt Festival over the years expanded to include jazz, folk, country, rock and dance in a season that runs from early June to past Labor Day.
- AP